What do we get and how do we get it?

Religions hold many similarities when it come to eternal rewards and how to achieve them:

For Buddhists - good works or good karma, gets you a better reincarnation in the next life and can eventually break the cycle of rebirth and death and take you to a state of Nirvana. Those who achieve Nirvana have escaped the cares of the physical life and experience a pleasurable and pure existence.

For Jehovah's Witnesses - good works lead to possibility being one of the 144,000 who get to heaven and rule over the earth.

For Mormons - good works lead to the possibility of becoming a god and ruling your own planet one day.

For Catholics - good works might get you to heaven (you can't really be sure) and they can also reduce your time in purgatory before you go to heaven. Sad that a Catholic can't have assurance of salvation or hope to escape time in purgatory, but at least within their system of beliefs, for those who eventually make it to heaven, it is God's presence that is seen as the goal and source of all blessing.

For Bible believing Christians - Eternal life is earned by the work of Christ alone and is offered freely to those who are born again and trust in His work to save. The reward for those who's faith is in Christ's work is being promised the opportunity, when we leave this life, to worship the one who earned our salvation for us face to face forever.

The catholic doctrines of salvation lacks assurance that the very worthy goal of living in God's presence can be achieved.

Of course the "you must earn it" religions have human pleasure/power as their end goal.

It is no small difference when you compare any false religion to biblical Christianity which has worshipping the one who earned the reward for us as it's end goal!

Eph. 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Rev. 21:22 But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.

"Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved."